The field of communications has become increasingly important in today's society. In particular, the ability to quickly and effectively interact with an individual (through any suitable communications media) presents a significant obstacle for component manufacturers, system designers, and network operators. This obstacle is made even more difficult due to the plethora of diverse communication technologies (e.g. Instant Messaging, cellular communications, simple voice sessions, etc.) that exist in the current marketplace.
As new communication platforms (such as session initiation protocol (SIP), for example) become available to the consumer, new protocols need to be developed in order to optimize this emerging technology. For example, new protocols may be developed for the elimination or reduction of spam emails and other communications received by network users. Spam communications typically refer to the flood of unwanted and unsolicited communications that are received by network users everyday. Often these spam communications include advertisements and commercial solicitations for dubious products and services. Use of the Internet by network users for both personal and business reasons has opened the door to spam communications. Existing communication networks and systems do not provide adequate privacy protection against these spam communications. This deficiency imposes a significant drain on worker productivity and network resources.